


Beauty

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-08
Updated: 2006-06-24
Packaged: 2019-01-19 11:46:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: "The beauty of this world entrances you, sustains you and, Lily, you do the exact same thing for me." Ahh, young love





	1. Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**_Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling_ **

** Beauty **

You're strange. I don't mean that in a bad way when I say it, but it's one of the only ways people at Hogwarts seem to be able to describe you. Strange is one of the only words they care to use as they watch you walking aloof through the Hogwarts’ hallways.

They don't mean it they way I do though. They think you're weird in your mind. You have these crazy ideas about life that just seem so foreign to them. You're line of thought seems inane to your 'friends' and other students because they're so beneath you and cannot even conjure up the smallest amount of understanding when it comes to your philosophies. You’re so far above everyone in this school and all they do is scoff at your individuality. All they do is turn away from you because the reality is that you are too perfect for most people in this world to stomach. I know you wouldn't like me saying that. You fancy yourself as ordinary and plain. You fancy yourself to be just like everyone else, a face in the crowd because that is how you would want it to be. But you're not, Lily. Bask in the glory of being different, of being wonderful.

I don't think like that when I call you strange. I don't mean it as slander or to be hurtful in any way. I mean it in the way that you're unique, exotic. You so different from everyone else inside this castle and it completely endears me to you whenever I catch a glimpse of your sadly serene face. You're an enigma to me, Lily. A mystery to anyone who ever had the fortune to cross your path. It’s your gift and your curse. It’s the reason you’re so lonely during the year. You have never had many friends and those who have had a chance at becoming a companion to you never last a long time. You float from person to person never staying long and never allowing a single soul to delve into your heart and understand the complexity that creates you. They never fight for you either. They allow you to slowly drift away and never fight to stay in your spot light because even after months of friendship they still cannot begin to understand you and cannot begin to want to try to. You're lonelier than you should be, but it never seems to phase you. You don’t seem to mind the solitude you live within. You don’t seem to care about the whispers that follow you when you walk quietly down a hall. It doesn’t seem to matter that people who call you their friend are besmirching your reputation the second you turn your back because you always seem to understand so much others cannot. You have this deep understanding about the world so even as people cruelly criticize your character you can’t be anything but happy because that’s what the beauty of life does to you. It completes you in a way those friends never could.

We were friends once a long time ago. I admit to being one of your passing fancies. I admit to moving on to bigger and better things when the opportunity arose because I was so young back then. I was a child pulled into a world that seemed to glitter of opportunity. It was a world where popularity and fame waited for me and I left you to achieve the superficial life I am currently living. I left you to live a life I know you despise. You're above everything around me. This lifestyle of mine is so beneath you and I envy your breach from this reality that I have to deal with. I envy you Lily.

You always seem to be the picture of contentment, and yet if a person was ever to look into your eyes a painful sadness would glitter through your green irises. You walk around with that notebook in your hand drawing pictures of nature, of so many beautiful things every other person would blindly miss. Drawing maybe the dew on a rose petal or the dying of a flame on a candle. You see beauty in things others take no notice of. People here live such worldly lives with no care to notice the beauty of the world around them. It is something I am just beginning to understand. This world is beautiful in its complexities as you are beautiful the same way. You seem intertwined in the mysteries of life because in a way its mysteries make up the composition of who you are. You are the world’s complexities in its truest and purest form. And that is what sustains you, the beauty of life even as its horrors kill you.

I watched you cry the other day reading some muggle romance novel. It plagued me for days to see the tears falling down your face and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around you, to stop your tears. It pained me in a way I never thought possible, to watch tears leak down your pale face. You don’t deserve the deep sadness you seem to feel in invisible moments when you believe yourself to be alone. You seem to cry about the smallest things, a poem that spoke to you or a first year crying for their mother. I remember the time you were reading Romeo and Juliet and you cried for days just remembering the tragic end of those lovers. It wasn’t real and never could be and yet it seemed to touch you more than the flight of those black owls telling students about the death of a parent. But, it’s one of those abnormalities that make you who you are. The fact that something so small, so transparent can pain you so deeply because you understand the tragedy of small mishaps can affect a person’s life, a person’s soul, so much more than all the death going on around us.

I love you Lily. It's my first proclamation of love towards anybody and may be my last. I love the way your hair tumbles in waves down your back or how your emerald eyes gleam with happiness and sadness all at the same time. I love how passionate you are about life, how you see things I cannot even begin to imagine. I love how free you are. How you don't condemn yourself to this world the way I do. You are who you want to be and you don't let anyone one change that. You don’t let anyone make you feel as if it’s wrong to be yourself. I see the way you react when someone calls you names. I see you turning the other cheek and letting it roll off you. It's as if you don't notice the girls talking, sometimes cruelly, about how you watched the rain instead of coming to our quidditch victory parties. I see how you ignore Slytherins whisperings calling you mudblood. It amazes me how much you can stand, how much you don't conform to what others think you should be. It’s an amazing strength you have to show yourself naked to the world and not care who accepts you for that. And yet again I have to tell you how much I envy that beauty I’ll never be able to assume.

I conformed and I know now that it is because I was weak. I became what everyone expected of me and at first I was in heaven. I was a superficial git who didn't care to notice that what I had before was so much more amazing than what I have now. Before I had you, and I need you Lily, I do. I changed. I know I did and I don’t regret who I am today. I don’t regret the path my life took me on because it did lead me to extraordinary places where I met three extraordinary friends. What I do regret is leaving you behind in the process. What I do regret is looking at you and wondering about what could have been. But, in truth, I don't even think you see me. When you look at me it's as if you look right through me, see right through me. I feel like a ghost sometimes when I see you in the halls. I feel like a ghost when a shadow of a smile won’t even grace your lips. You break my heart but I doubt you could ever realize it.

You don't love me, hell you don't even like me. You're quiet with your distaste though. You are never rude. You never make your feelings about me known. You allow us to have polite yet rigid conversations that fill me with contentment before draining all my pleasure out of me as you walk away. Just to speak with you fills me with the rarest joys but leaves me empty each time you make a quick excuse and walk away. You walk away and I know that you’ll never want me to follow. I want so much more than that from you Lily. I want you to love me. I want to be with you. It isn't an option anymore. I need you to survive and I feel like I'm dying every time I watch you bound into the common with your eyes sparkling happy without me. It hurts to watch you live your life not caring for me at all.

I'm always going to love you, you know. You're not the kind of girl people can fall out of love with. Your impression on peoples' mind is too lasting and too ingrained to ever go away. You're the type of person who someone will remember forever because you're too strange, too unique, to ever forget. And I’ll always love you because you’ve burned your mark on my heart, on my soul. Lily, I know I did wrong by you in the past. I know you have every right to hate me because I haven’t always treated you with as much respect as I should have. But I’m asking for your forgiveness, Lily. I’m asking you this one thing because the beauty of this world entrances you, sustains you and, Lily, you do the exact same thing for me.

_End (James POV) I have a companion to this piece so if you like this I’ll post that one as well and if you don’t well whatever than lol!_

_Like it? Hate it?_

_Review!_


	2. Facade

** Facade  **

 

As the years pass me by I find it harder and harder to believe that we were ever friends. Memories of first and second year have blended with the dreams inside my mind and sometimes I feel as if everything you once were to me was a fantasy. I feel as if I made up that special bond between us to fill some void the years have left inside my heart. It is hard for me to grasp the differences since we were children. You’re popular now, James. You’re the king of this castle and what is most amazing to me of all is that fact that there was a time, a single moment in your life in which you noticed I was alive.

Many days I feel as if I am nothing more than a ghost. I feel as if I live in a school and have friends who look into my eyes and see right passed. Do you feel it, as well, James? Do you witness their blank stares as you try to give them some clue into your inner persona and realize all you’ll ever be is the popular illusion you made yourself become? They don’t see you, James, not the real you. To them all you’ll ever be is Gryffindor’s hero and the moment, the moment you aren’t their golden boy anymore you’ll be left alone remembering when your life sparkled. You’ll be left and then what will you do, James? What will you become if the inevitable should happen?

When I look at you I see two different people. I see that happy jock, who never runs dry of a funny joke and is always ready to present a crowd with some short lived amusement. Then, I look again. I look deep into your hazel eyes and all I see is emptiness. I see a person you suppress trying to break free but stay constrained out of fear. I see that and remember a young eleven year I was once friends with and it breaks my heart. He’s the person who frightens your sister’s bullies. He’s the one who would prank any slytherin who had the audacity to call a muggleborn a mudblood. Yet that other side of you, the beautiful mask, slanders and shouts malicious words the moment after some heroic tirade. I don’t understand it, James. I don’t think I could if I tried.

I know what people say about me. I hear whispers about my strangeness and snobbery. I hear what the girls say in the dorm when they think I am asleep or what people whisper about me in the shadows of the library. Last year, I listened quietly as one of my friends gossiped about me to you and your group and again I wonder, why can’t you say something then? It’s as if you become a different person out of the public’s eye. You laughed, if I recall. My friend spoke of me as if I wasn’t worth the life I was living and I remember you laughing. It would have hurt me, but all it did was make me wonder where it comes from? How can an essentially good person have so much cruelty inside of them?

You’re a lie James. Everything you are is nothing more than a façade you put on for the world. If you ever noticed me I think I would stare into your golden eyes and beg the answer to one simple question. Why?

I don’t know how to describe the pain I get when I see you. It hurts me to know that for all your smiles and jokes you truly are dying inside. This game you are playing with your life has been slowly ripping you apart for years and you should fear what would happen if you don’t break free. I know. That boy I once knew. The compassionate one with the sparkle in his eyes. He’ll die and then this is all you’ll ever be, a beautiful mask.

Sometimes I feel as if no matter how hard I wish we will never be destined to meet. I feel as though our worlds are parallel universes and that you and I are forever destined to live in a world apart. You live in a glittering reality in which you are loved by all, yet it is a dark reality for all its promises because loneliness never stops creeping up on you. I live in a world on my own no one has ever tried to impenetrate yet I am happy because everything I am in this world is true to who I am inside. I know people laugh about me wondering cruelly why the innocent redhead doesn’t come down to quidditch parties and why she goes to the astronomy tower alone. I know they watch me stare and observe the life around me and laugh amongst themselves about my oddities. The thing is, James, is that I don’t care. I don’t care what any one else thinks about me.

You’ve changed since we were friends and I can truly say I do not know who you are anymore. Sometimes I wish to talk to you about that. I wish to take your arm and speak to you about where our lives have led us and why destiny felt the need to take your friendship from me. But in your reality, I doubt you know I even exist.

I have the emotions for you that pain me more then anything else in this world. When I look at you, I know I am in love with you and every time I look into your eyes I feel a sharp pain ripping away at my heart. It hurts to know that you don’t see me, not really. It hurts to know that the one person I would want to take into my world forevermore is unattainable, unreachable.

I’m not asking you to love me. As much of a thinker and dreamer I am I take no notice of silly fantasies. What I want you to know is that all I wish is for your happiness, yet I know that as you are now true happiness will never overcome you. You sit high on a throne of false praises as a hollow smile graces your lips and shallowness overcomes your eyes. You surround yourself with friends and leave me on the outside, out of your reach. You’ve isolated yourself, James. You’ve paid the price for your popularity and the one thing I would say to you is, let it go. Let the façade go James and finally allow yourself to be happy for the first time in years. Let it go and live, with or without me.

End 

If you read the original on ff.net i guess you could notice that it is entirely rewritten lol! Slightly AU because i do not take notice of the marauders.


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